All is still okay here. The dams seem to be holding up in our areas, but the water is unbelievably high. I can’t actually get into town to see it for myself, but I spoke with someone in Jefferson today who has been helping sandbag the Sanitation Plant, so she knows what she’s talking about.

The town is ripped apart. The water got up to the bottoms of the bridges and engineers had to drill holes through them to release the pressure that was building up. There are three main bridges in town and all of them are closed, so it takes half an hour to get from one side to the other when it used to take ten seconds.

My source described downtown Jefferson as a ghost town. Everything’s closed or flooded out. There’s a little burger place on a corner where it flash floods in a hard rain, and she described the water as being past the level of the drive-up window. At first I thought she meant, that far away from the road. No, she meant that far up from the ground. No burgers today.

I was calling her to find out if summer school for the incoming kindergarteners was being delayed as I had hard; it was supposed to start this Tuesday. She said they can’t decide what to do with it yet. They have over 1,000 children enrolled for this — and no way to get them to the now-flooding building where the program was going to be held. The earliest day they might start is this Friday. Maybe. I will have to check the school district website day by day for updates.

We did go out to Milwaukee today to see my FIL, and though the rivers and lakes were up quite a bit, we weren’t in any actual flooded roadways. The trip east wasn’t a problem; west was another matter, as they closed the freeway miles before truly necessary in order to divert big trucks and major traffic to the best detours. So we crawled along, watching drivers try to whip past on the left, think about whipping past on the right, swing into the left lane to try to keep people from whipping around them to the left, and so on. I don’t know what it was about the signs “FREEWAY CLOSED AHEAD” that made people think that risking their lives to be one car length closer to the detour that everyone was taking, was worth it. After we got off the freeway all our local roads were fine.

Knitwise? I’m not getting much done. I have been doing some test knitting for a Ravelry friend, doing a row or two of the heelflap scarf every once in a while, and generally not being very enthused about my other projects. But tonight, in honor of father’s day and the father/dad of my children, I think I’ll start the heel flaps of his Panda Cotton socks.

I didn’t get any spinning done this weekend, and I’m bummed about that, too. I spun three weekends in a row and started little file cards to document each fiber. I did finish some Actual Yarn and will blog about that on Spinning Wheels when I get a chance.

Stay dry — pray for us — help whoever you can, wherever you are.

Sorry its taken me so long to get a new post up. Terrible storms, the end of school, and a husband who was out of town for a week have contributed to a slight lack of time.

However. Though today is (so far) a sunny day and we’re not particularly close to any river, we’re on the verge of being trapped where we are. I had planned hoped wished I could go to Worldwide Knit in Public Day celebrations in Lake Mills, but various road closures due to flooding have made that impossible.

If you’ve been following along on the Weather Channel, look at the Interstates of southern Wisconsin next time they put up a map. You’ll see an inverted triangle connecting Madison, Milwaukee, and Janesville/Beloit. All you need to know for this exercise is that I live somewhere in the middle of this triangle.

Recently, parts of I-94 (connecting Milwaukee and Madison) were closed because of high water and/or bridge concerns. The official route for traveling between Milwaukee and Madison is to take the other two legs of the triangle, I-43 to Janesville/Beloit, and then I-39 north to Madison. I don’t know where you think you can go after you get to Madison, certainly not to Minneapolis, but that’s beyond my jurisdiction. Got it? Can’t go past us, go around the whole area.

Within this triangle are Jefferson, which has closed two of its three bridges and cut the city in half. The river is up three feet from where it was flooding everything in April, and hasn’t crested yet. The city has asked for voluntary evacuations. Fort Atkinson has even worse problems, as it’s where the Bark River meets the Rock River. They’ve been filling sandbags for a couple of days. They sent out a map of potentially flooded areas, and at this point, the only entrance to the city is from the west. Which, sitting where we are, we’d have to go through Jefferson to get to. And we can’t. Unless we went way south to Whitewater, west to Fort, and came in from the south. Maybe.

To our east is Rome Pond. Last summer they built a new bridge over it and reconstructed the roadway. I don’t know what the old road and bridge were like, but I can tell you this bridge isn’t high over the water by any means. If the dams let go upstream (Lake Nagawicki in Delafield) we are going to be in a world of hurt for getting anywhere.

This brings to mind the horse I had when I was a teenager. She was a 16 year old Quarter Horse. We weren’t planning on showing her or traveling with her, so we didn’t have a trailer. And we bought her from a farm only a few miles away. When she saw the chance to take of and go back “home,” she did, and I frequently had to go out on the county roads to get her and bring her back.

This turned out to be pretty easy because Cocoa had a fear of going over bridges. Even a culvert bridge was too much for her. This truncated her “free” range so much that whenever a neighbor called to tell me she was in their yard, all I had to do was grab a couple of carrots and a halter, and walk over for her. She was a fat and greedy girl, and even when she later had a partner in crime, Cricket, they were always easy to bring home with carrots and oats. They never went any more than a mile away.

But feeling stuck in what’s likely to be a three-mile radius isn’t pleasant. So I’ll be knitting at home today, and looking at the maps. I may have to move the basement contents to the living room, but I have food, electricity, water, and health. (And yarn and fiber, don’t forget that.) But when you watch the weather, think about those of us in the Wisconsin Bermuda Triangle. We can’t get there from here.

First of all, my immense gratitude goes out to everyone who sent me knitting podcast suggestions. I just (really, JUST) finished listening to ‘casts 2 and 3 of Sticks and String, and am about to transfer ‘casts 2 and 3 of Cast On to the iPod. I thought they were there, but they weren’t. Still figuring out this iTunes business. Maybe it’s just too uncomplicated.

But anyway, I love both these ‘casts, and after some false starts with Doctor Who podcast selection (i.e., if I’m not ready to watch series 3, I probably shouldn’t be listening to current news about current episodes, here at the end of series 4) I found some Doctor Who audio tales that might be just right for those long nights when The Husband is busy making a magazine, or in Canada, or traveling for business, or wherever. My only half-complaint is that the headphone we now have make my ears hurt. That shouldn’t be hard to fix.

The podcasts were a real bit of cheer in a rough night. Because Mr. Beth is out of the country and I have to actually Be The Mom to four kids, I couldn’t go to Late Night Knitting at the Sow. Can’t go to the next one, either, or to a Saturday meeting of the local spinning guild. Darn schedule conflicts. So I can now use these barren nights to listen to podcasts. I learn about knitting, I hear new music I otherwise wouldn’t, and I am entertained.

I need some entertaining — while I was trying to get my Ravelry fix this evening, my kids were in the process of breaking my ball winder. The handle was snapped off flush at the base, and the tension wire (for lack of a better term) was bent out of shape. The wire arm I could have fixed, but I’ve used enough cyanoacrylate to know I wouldn’t be able to fix the handle.

The little tube that you wind the yarn onto didn’t get broken, because it was elsewhere holding the ball of my first handspun on it. So now, when I buy a replacement winder, I will have extra yarn storage. Kind of like having an extra mixing bowl for your stand mixer. But it does mean I’ll need to buy the same style of ball winder so this tube will fit.

Knitting updates:

I went to Open Knitting at Gosh Yarn It (Lake Mills) on Wednesday evening, and spent a lovely time with the store owner, Patty Dehnert. I was the only one there! To give you an idea of how much we chatted, Open Knitting was from 6 to 8 and the first time I looked at the clock, it was 8:10. I showed Patty my handspun, bought another skein of yarn so I can start my second Hufflepuff mitten, did one repeat of the test knitting I’m doing for Mazzmatazz, and exactly one row of a four-row repeat of the lace. Honest to God, I thought I would have to rip it all out. I counted that row at least three times to make sure I hadn’t screwed anything up. Now I know that what I will screw up is starting it again and managing to forget that I knitted one row of the pattern already.

She seemed impressed with the ridiculous number of projects I brought, and she didn’t even charge me the Open Knitting fee. Kudos to Patty! I would link to her store site, but I don’t think she has one yet. She is still getting her feet wet with Ravelry ventures and commenting on blogs, so say hey if you come across her. She’s very nice and a little shy.

I meant to spin tonight, but instead I picked up Bamboo Sock Two and have gotten it almost to the heel flap portion of our show. I’ll do those few more rows after I get done uploading this. (I would go to Ravelry, but the Software Update icon is bouncing like a hyperactive beach ball on the Dock [I SEE you!], and it’s getting very distracting. Besides, perhaps I ought to allow time for sleep.)

I did get through three wonderful episodes of Torchwood last night: Ghost Machine, Cyberwoman, and Small World. Can’t wait for more. But I can’t do anything but plain vanilla sock while I watch, since there’s so much going on.

Quote of the Day from Jack (my Jack, not Captain Jack Harkness): “If you’re on the wrong way, go out. If you’re on the right way, go in!”

I just wanted to thank you for the part you played in my wonderful dream last night.

Wait — it’s not the part you think it is! While I’m sure that women dream about you all the time, this dream was different. Trust me.

Last night I dreamed I was attending my high school reunion. For the record, the place in the dream was not my high school, nor were the people in my dream anyone I knew from high school. It was just one of those dream situations. (I haven’t been to any reunion since 1990, either, but as we’ve already established, that seems to be beside the point.)

At any rate, through an elaborate sequence of events I can no longer remember, your mother presented me with box after box of… sweaters.

They were her own hand knitting, these piles of fine-gauge pullovers and cardigans. There were solid colors, intarsia, everything under the rainbow. I was amazed and delighted as I lifted one sweater after another out of the boxes, and honored by her gift. She seemed very happy to give them to me, too. (Had she and I met before, in a previous and unremembered dream?) Oh, and her short golden hair was just gorgeous.

I moved a few of the boxes of sweaters to my car, vowing to come back for the rest of them later. The rest of the dream has now vanished from memory.

Alas, by the light of day my van is sadly empty. But please give my best regards to your lovely mother and my deepest appreciation of her handiwork. Even if they were only the stuff of dreams, it was wonderful to see them and to have been able to run those smooth, even stitches through my hands.

Give her a hug for me, Mr. Redford.

Love, Beth

P.S. I think my mother would like to say hi to you, too — though I suspect that if she dreams about you, it doesn’t involve your mother’s knitting.

The rules: Posted here at the beginning. The player answers all questions. The player then chooses six people you want to know more about and tags those people by listing their names at the end of the post and going to their blog and leaving a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Also, you let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? I was married to my ex (#3), and working full time at a day care center. I wasn’t pregnant, I didn’t have any children, and I didn’t know how to scrapbook, bead, knit, quilt, or spin. Wow, look at all that free time. What **was** I doing?

2. What were five things on my to-do list today (not in any particular order)? Finish running the laundry, pay the bills, check out a spinning supplier in Whitewater, watch Torchwood, and sort through stacks and stacks of paperwork. (Note: I wrote this on Saturday and it’s now the following Thursday.)

3. What snacks do I enjoy? salted cashews, dark chocolate, and salted popcorn with real butter.

4. Where are some places I’ve lived? In an 1880s farmhouse in Indiana, in a condo in Hilliard that I helped finish building, and on an 18 acre farm where I had my own horse.

5. What things would I do if I were a billionaire? Pay off my husband’s student loan, set up a scholarship program at my alma mater (Miami University), and start a fiber farm in Wisconsin or Ohio Amish country.

Six people I’m tagging: Lauren, Molly Bee, Dale-Harriet, Jules, KaRi, and Brandy.

I can spin. On my spinning wheel, no less.

Read the complete (sort of) story over at one of my other blogs, Spinning Wheels. Sadly, I still can’t got photos uploaded. Imagine an Ashford bobbin full of white yarn, ‘kay?

Knitting update: Almost half done with the last Debbie Bliss square. Started another square for the Doctor Who afghan. One more repeat on the silk stole.

We did have guests over for a grillout yesterday, and it was in the high 70s, so all the kids were in swimsuits beforehand, getting squirted by Dad (armed with a garden hose). They all showed their Irish skin pretty quickly and Tom had to be escorted inside in a hurry before he burned. Nobody actually did burn, but they drank a lot of lemonade later, and everyone slept well (despite a quick-moving storm).

Except me, who was up at 2am with heartburn. I had a sore throat all day Monday and gradually lost my voice until today, when I am just hoping I don’t get any phone calls. Can hardly make a sound.

Friends who would like to cheer me up can do so by e-mailing me pictures of the Tenth Doctor. Molly Bee, I think you know the one I’m looking for and cannot find.

Can’t tell you anything because I didn’t get to go. The babysitter called to tell us she was getting a late start coming over, so DH changed the prebought tickets to the next showing. Then she called to say her little girl had gotten sick in the car on the way over. End of date night.

DH ended up taking eldest so the ticket money didn’t go to waste, and I stayed home with the other three kids and watched Ratatouille.

Maybe next time.

Knitting on a Debbie Bliss square right now. I have enough to finish this one and then do one more, then it’s time to crank out some more for the Doctor Who afghan.

Oh — and I may go visit Babe’s Fiber Garden this afternoon, if I can get out. I talked with the owner this morning and he also told me about a local spinning guild that meets in Whitewater. I missed the May meeting, but I might be able to hook up with them in June. This is the same group I e-mailed without success last September or so, so I’m trying to keep my expectations low. But I need to find some knitters & spinners & fiberfolk that are closer to me.

Watched the first episode of Torchwood last night and hope to knock off episode two tonight. Bring it on, Netflix!

Oh, and Michelle? I’ll get to that meme soon, I promise. Everyone else: wait to be tagged.

This is a temporary post because my “connectivity” is spotty this afternoon, but I just wanted to let everyone know the colonoscopy went OK, all is well, and everyone liked all the knitting projects I took to the hospital to work on. Hey, I only took 3 projects and I worked on all of them.

I also snagged the first podcasts of Sticks and String and Cast-On, but the third cast I got (They Might Be Giants) loaded first, so I’m listening to that first. I’ll get the hang of this technology thing someday, I swear to God I will.

And the first disc of Torchwood came in the mail today, so I hope to get started on that tonight. You Torchwood fans, zip your lips please, I’m trying to catch up.

Part II

My oh my, I have before me an illustration of why you need to go to your children’s school concerts.

Tonight was the spring Fine Arts Festival. The evening included a concert from the 5th-8th grade band, singing from everyone from PreK-3 and PreK-4’s to 8th graders, and an exhibition of K-8 artwork (drawing, painting, sculpture) in the school gym… and an ice cream social at $1 a scoop.

Everything was cute (yes, I cried), some groups were strikingly good, and the whole evening was priceless.

Especially the part where the principal came out and told the assembled parents and grandparents how well the kids did when the school was in Real Live Lockdown in the morning. Yes, not only did they have a successful lockdown practice on Monday, but this morning (it’s still Thursday as I write) someone tried to break into the school. He was caught by the police, he was unarmed, no one was hurt, all the kids did perfectly what kids these days are expected to do. In fact, almost all of them were in the church, practicing for the concert, when the incident occurred.

(This may or may not ever show up in the news. It wasn’t in the local afternoon paper today and was not on their web site tonight, and it hasn’t yet been covered in the Milwaukee paper. A Google search won’t turn it up. It might show up in tomorrow’s paper as a police log report, who knows. If no one calls the paper, it might never show up at all.)

Now perhaps I was a teensy bit preoccupied with this colonoscopy “thang” today, but I did wonder why I was finding out about this incident at the concert. After the whole thing was over, my 9-year-old sidled up to me and said, “Did [the principal] make the special announcement?” When I finally figured out he was talking about the lockdown, I did ask him why he hadn’t told me about it when he got home.

“I didn’t know if you wanted to know.” And he shrugged. Kids these days.

Anyway, by now I’ve forgotten whatever I promised to give the details of. It doesn’t seem to matter any more, really. Go hug your brave little kids for me, willya?

Knitting update: I did take knitting to the kids’ concert. I got no dirty looks (that I noticed, anyway) or interested looks as I worked on the Heelflap scarf. But I was really glad I took the knitting along when Colleen got super bored waiting for the whole thing to be over. Here, a pair of size 6 needles and a little ball of leftover Laurenspun. Go to it, girl! It kept her interested for just long enough. Thank you, knitting! I got an inch or so done on the scarf while waiting for different portions of the show to be ready.

No Torchwood tonight, I’m afraid; it’s past 11pm now and maybe it will happen Saturday.

Why Saturday? Because Mr. Chocolatesheep has arranged for a babysitter for tomorrow night. That’s right, we’re planning to take in dinner and a talkie. Might even get popcorn. Shall it be Baby Mama? Prince Caspian? or Indiana Jones on opening night?

P.S. I am so sorry about the pr0n sp@m that’s been showing up lately in the comments. Akismet must be having a bad week because I don’t know how some of that stuff is getting through. I’m deleting it as soon as I find it, I promise. This blog is not about the yuck factor.

I now have a hand-me down iPod shuffle, thanks to Mr. Chocolatesheep. My music is all on CD in the car for listening while I drive, so I thought I would start listening to some knitting podcasts.

But I don’t know where to start! I have heard of a few…but don’t know what would be to my liking.

So, what’s your favorite podcast and why? Don’t put a link in your comment, as you may end up in the Spam Bucket and it’s been icky in there lately. Just give me the name of the podcast or who does it, and I’ll follow up with you if I need more information on how this all works.

Knitting update: doing the hand decreases on Mitten One right now. Did more of a Debbie Bliss demin square. Everything else is just sitting around.

Top Chef tonight! It’s Restaurant Wars everyone!

School is winding down here, and the summer schedules of travel, Scout camp, and pre-kindergarten school (!!!) are visible on the horizon. It’s going to take a while to figure out when & where we can go, especially with the price of gas being what it is. Maybe we will rent horses and ride to Ohio. Best not to dwell on that.

Also our TV seasons are ending — not all at the same time, of course. Our favorite BBC America shows (Top Gear, Last Restaurant Standing) have already had their season enders, Bravo (Top Chef) still has a few weeks to go, and Food Network (Next Food Network Star) is about to start. Somehow we missed most of the NBC season of Thursday night shows, but managed to catch the season finales of 30 Rock (Mexican cheese doodles, anyone?) and The Office (I said, OKAY). We’ll have to watch the full seasons their second time around, with more daylight and no school to get the kiddies to bed early when something like My Name is Earl is showing at 7pm.

I’m conveniently ignoring the other stuff like office visits, hospital procedures, baking for the pizza place, and coordinating this Sheep & Wool afterparty. Because when your husband points out that you haven’t blogged in a while, maybe it’s time to get back on track.

Last weekend DH & I went to the unsold empty house on Saturday and did some work on it. He mowed the shaggy lawn, we moved in a set of washer & dryer to give the laundry room that “laundry room” look, and I vacuumed all the carpeted rooms. The drive belt had snapped on the vac the day before, so this meant hooking up the attachment hose and doing all the work crawling around on my hands and knees. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But at least the house got aired out & looks better. We brought back 2 sets of cross-country skis — what timing!

No meetups (too much work to do), no trip to Herrschners (I think he’s on to me), not even garlic cheeseburgers from Marvin’s (they weren’t open yet) or cannolis from Cheese Louise (they were closed already).

But I did get some knitting done. I did one and a half sock-yarn squares for the Doctor Who Afghan Project, and worked on the cuff for the second Panda Cotton sock (cast on at Late Night Knit on Friday, amid much fretting and grumbling).

And Knit Night was good, even without the traveling Dale-Harriet in attendance. Her daughter Lovely Mary was there, hiding from a sock gusset (unsuccessfully, as it turned out), Molly Bee stayed longer than usual, and I met some new (to me) knitters while sitting at the Big Table. I saw yet another knitter with a boot cast on — what is the deal, and I hope this isn’t catching!

So, here’s the project summary:

Tyrone (for Jack Tom): Still on hold, but I know where the project sheet is. In my pattern binder, of all the odd places. Yeah, I know!
Irish Hiking Scarf (for ???): Still on hold while others go first, has no priority.
Panda Cotton socks (for DH): Sock One on hold pre-heelflap; Sock Two at mid-cuff.
Acrylic tube scarf (for ???): on the verge of frogging. I am really starting to hate this thing. Will trade for fiber, please make offer!
Acrylic heelflap scarf (for ???): I’m using leftover yarn from a pastel Colleen sweater and knitting a scarf in Sl1, K1 across, Purl back. I’m only a few rows into it and it’s still curling up at the bottom, so I’ll have to do a bunch more before I can see if it looks good enough to keep.
Hufflepuff mittens (for me): Working thumb gusset on Mitten One. After some of these “exotic” fibers I’ve been working with lately, knitting with Plymouth Encore Worsted feels great!
Silk stole (for me): Snuck this one in on you, didn’t I? This was supposed to be a cotton lace washcloth. But I found a couple of balls of Shire Silk in baby blue at a new local yarn store, and cast on for a “washcloth” with size 15 needles. I haven’t done a repeat in a while, I don’t know how much yarn I’m going to need, I’ve never used silk, I’ve never done lace. I don’t care. I’ll get more yarn when I need it.
Leftovers afghan (us): I’ve started on a second five-inch square from the Debbie Bliss Denim Cotton Aran yarn. In about 35 years I will have a blanket. Or, 4 squares if I never find any more of this yarn on sale.

I had a knitting dream the other night, too. I was working with some sort of cobweb weight green lace on a really fancy project that I had completely hosed. The border didn’t go all the way around, some sections looked like entrelac squares done with a different shade of green…..you could almost hear the frogs croaking offstage. I was glad to wake up from that one.

What else is up for this week? Big Tom has an appointment tomorrow to be fitted (perhaps) with a mild orthotic (his left foot turns in, sometimes). There’s a colonoscopy scheduled for Thursday (not mine) that could use some positive vibes. And there was a line from yesterday’s mass bulletin that caught my eye:

“Pray for the sick, for there are many.”

Lucky for us, we already know that cooking and knitting are prayer.